Established in 1969, Manohar is a publishing house and a bookseller serving individuals and libraries. We export books by mail and have a bookstore at Ansari Road in Delhi.
Manohar initially sold only rare and out of print publications, but soon branched out into local sale/export of new books published in India, and then into publishing of scholarly works under its own imprint.

16 September, 2012

Situating
trade and traders in the overall agrarian milieu of early India, this book
highlights the diversities of merchants and market places, which are not viewed
as an undifferentiated category. Chakravarti strongly argues against the
perception of declining trade in India during the period AD 500-1000, and
demonstrates the linkages of trade at the locality level during this period.
The author questions the stereotyped account of early Indian commerce merely in
terms of trade in luxuries and draws our attention to transactions in daily
necessities. In-depth analysis of maritime commerce in the Bengal coast (c.
200 BC to AD 1300) is a major feature of the book.

The
author also explores different, if not sometimes conflicting, attitudes of
early Indian society to merchants, who were lauded as patrons to cultural
activities and also branded as ‘open thieves’; yet the presence of
non-indigenous merchants was always favoured. The settlements of foreign
merchants especially in coastal tracts witnessed in different ages remarkable
cultural synthesis and coexistence among diverse trading communities. Most
significantly, the social and cultural accommodation of several non-indigenous
minority groups is inseparably associated with the history of early Indian
commerce. The author also examines the role of trading communities in the
making of a plural and complex society like India.

Ranabir
Chakravarti,
Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi specializes in the social and economic history of early India, with a
thrust particularly on the maritime trade of India in the Indian Ocean (c.
AD 700-1500).

Tools and Ideas:
The Beginnings of Local
Industrialization in South
Gujarat, 1970-2000

By-
Hein Streefkerk

This
book is a study of industrial development and labour relations in south
Gujarat, western India. The empirical findings presented are based on long-term
intensive anthropological fieldwork covering a period of 30 years, from 1970 to
2000.

The
book provides an in-depth analysis of the different phases of industrialization
in one of the most industrialized regions of India, covering both the period of
planned development and that of the more recent phase of economic
liberalization. It describes the transformation of a predominantly rural area
into an industrial belt by giving a detailed account of the owners and workers
in small scale factories. Economic success in this part of India has been
accompanied by structural poverty among a large part of the population.
Entrepreneurial spirit has gone together with a worsening of labour conditions,
among them erosion of the rights of the labour force. In various respects,
developments in south Gujarat, as described in this book, illustrates the
contradictory model of development and deprivation in India.

Providing
a long-term perspective on industrial development, this book will be essential reading for those engaged in the study of rural development, entrepreneurship,
labour relations, and social change in India.

Until
his retirement in 2004, Hein Streefkerk was Assistant Professor in the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, The
Netherlands.